John 10:11-18; 1 John 3:16-24
April 25, 2021
- Following the Good Shepherd as Good Sheep
I believe that it has come up before that I have always been fascinated with words and am a “word nerd.” I took Latin through my grade school years and majored in Greek and Latin at Hampden-Sydney. It gives me joy to understand how words have worked over the years to be the vehicles that are powered by ideas. For instance, infant and infantry have the same root, as does hippopotamus and the name Phillip, as does sarcophagus and sarcasm. I find it all most interesting, so it may be no surprise that I have also pondered specific words that relate to the life of faith. There are so many great words that carry deep and profound meaning for us in the church. Some time you will have to ask me about one of my favorites – “confidence,” but eventually when I write my book about this called “Words of Faith,” chapter one will all be about today’s sermon: shepherd and sheep.
The actual Latin word for shepherd is pastor. Every pastor by nature of the word is tagged with being a shepherd for others, whether we want that responsibility or not, whether we are good at it or not, the weight of the word places that responsibility on our shoulders. Then, there is the sheep. The “greg” part of congregation is the Latin word for flock or herd. To “congregate” means to “flock together,” or to “gather in a herd like sheep.” I imagine you get the idea. A congregation lives together through the struggles and celebrations of life as a group of sheep, so-to-speak, and the pastor of the congregation has the very real responsibility of shepherding and tending to the people. There is no surprise there. This is probably intuitively obvious if you have any connection to church life, but I want you to see how important it is to understand the relationship that we all have as sheep to our Good Shepherd. It is in the very DNA of our faith.
This is what Jesus was trying to impress on those who would listen in the texts for today. You can clearly hear in the passage from the Gospel of John that Jesus is foreshadowing his death for us all: “The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” This is the grace that carries us into the death of our Savior and the promise of his resurrection, but what this passage means is so much more than simply the declaration that Jesus died for us. He is showing us that he is our SHEPHERD and not just a shepherd but a GOOD one. He is drawing from this image on purpose. It was a common job of Jesus’ day but not a good job. Remember that a shepherd was not someone who could get work doing anything else. This was the job for the low man on the totem pole and for children. No one would be proud of saying he is a shepherd. That’s why so many of them were NOT “good” shepherds. These were not people who stood out in the world except for by their smell. Even ordinary people would have a hard time risking their very lives to save someone else’s sheep, and no child grew up saying he wanted to be a shepherd when he was grown. Yet, yet, yet, Jesus owns this image, and he was not even a real shepherd.
There is a reason why we love Psalm 23 so much. It is such a song of care and comfort and provision and love. Even in the darkest valley of death, we are free to fear no evil because our shepherd is with us. We inwardly crave the tender, leading, providing guidance that a shepherd gives to even the smallest and weakest of the sheep because we ourselves identify with the sheep. As a pastor, I like to think of myself more as a sheep, too. Even though I am tasked with tending to this flock, I need as much care and support and guidance as anyone else. We are all sheep. We all need each other. We all walk through this life together trying to follow Jesus.
I saw a remarkable video this week from what looked like Greece or Turkey. It was somewhere over there in the world where we might expect plenty of modern-day sheep herders. There was a long ditch that had been dug for a good-sized pipe, maybe 10-12 inches wide, and the video begins with a sheep stuck head down in this ditch with basically only its back legs sticking out. The boy tending to the sheep was trying to pull it out and finally just muscled it out by yanking on its back leg. The sheep looked both elated and terrified and took off down the path. Maybe forty yard down, it tried to jump over the ditch but went right back down exactly as it was before. It was tragic but hilarious. The poor sheep had no clue what it was doing and went right back into the same problem. Sound familiar?
It should sound familiar because the real point of this figure of speech from Jesus is to let us know that he thinks we are the sheep, too. That may not seem very earth shattering to you, but it was pretty shocking to the people who were listening to him back then. They were outraged enough after he said all of this that they accused him of having a demon, but we really need to consider from this passage just why Jesus gave his life for us as a shepherd. We need to talk about what being a sheep demands from us. After all, we would rather not be that sheep that keeps jumping into the same hole.
The first idea is one when Jesus says being the Good Shepherd means his sheep know his voice and they know him. It is that simple: being Jesus’ sheep means that we know him and his voice. Of course, sounding simple does not make it simple. Our tendency is to replace Jesus with our own idea of Jesus and to replace his voice with what we want to hear. This is the great threat of idolatry – swapping the actual Lord for our own made up, wished for Lord. Also, we close our ears to anything we don’t want to hear. We should not imagine that all of Jesus’ words to us are easy or comfortable. Sometimes what he has to say is difficult and causes us a good bit of trouble. It is nearly impossible in some places of the world to stand up for those who cannot speak for themselves. Jesus was doing something similar in his day by providing a voice of hope to the powerless, the voiceless, the forgotten, and the poor. We should be doing the same today for the ones in need.
The second idea is that Jesus’ flock is greater than the one we expect. On the one hand, this is a great comfort because Jesus was a Jew speaking to Jews, and none of us in here is Jewish to the best of my knowledge. We could say that the greater herd of sheep that Jesus is referring to brings us into the fold, but the rest of this idea is that the flock of Jesus is greater than we expect, and it is harder to identify from our human perspectives. All who call themselves Christians might not actually be in the flock, and some who do not call themselves Christians might well be followers of Jesus. We must be careful to not draw lines of who is in and who is out with our assumptions, because if there is one thing that God does, it is confound our assumptions. Our God is much bigger than our expectations.
The last part of us being sheep that comes from this reading is from the First Letter of John. If you want to be a sheep of our Lord, you must follow his lead and obey his commandment – love each other. As many of you may know, my mother-in-law passed away this week. She was a lifelong educator/principal in Nottoway County and taught multiple generations in many of the same families. And she was good at her job because she loved her children, all of them. Just the other day, Anne and I ran into one of her former students who when he was in middle school could not read. Rather than let him fall through the cracks, she began recording stories on a tape recorder for him to listen to as he followed along in the book. Eventually, he showed up at her desk with tears in his eyes because he had just read his first book. Every child was precious and worth the investment, not just certain ones. We cannot underestimate how important something like functional literacy means to all people. Education, opportunity, dignity are all expressions of love, too. There are so, so, so many ways to love others if we are willing to go to the trouble. Anything we can do that values another life is an expression of love. Jesus seems to think we are worth it. He has made us his sheep for this.
Following our Good Shepherd is just as relevant today, maybe even more so with the exponential crises of our world. If we are willing to be his sheep, we have to be willing to listen and follow his true voice, be open to finding new sisters and brothers in faith, and to truly loving our neighbor. We absolutely do not have to be perfect, but we do need to give ourselves to the love that died for us and be that love in this community. That is grace. To God be the glory. Amen.